Hold the press, we've actually found a Black Friday graphics card deal: $100 off an AMD RX 6900 XT
At $1,499.99 it's still a lot of money, though it is at least a high-performance graphics card nominally below the stated MSRP.
The only real Black Friday graphics card deal we've found is a damning indictment of the current state of the GPU market. It's a quality slice of graphics silicon, with a $100 discount at Newegg, but a pricetag only its mother could love. The ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT Phantom Gaming D uses AMD's most powerful GPU, and will make for an outstanding upgrade for almost anyone's gaming rig, if you can afford it.
The Radeon RX 6900 XT is mighty competitive with Nvidia's RTX 3080 and occasionally even the GeForce RTX 3090, but has suffered by comparison in our reckoning because of its $999 MSRP and the fact that it's only marginally quicker than the excellent Radeon RX 6800 XT. But there's no doubting that the RDNA 2 architecture can deliver supreme gaming frame rates and this will make for a great basis for an excellent gaming PC.
It's just that it's so damned expensive, and even with a $100 discount this ASRock version is still $1,499.99. That's pretty much the price of an entire RTX 3070-powered gaming laptop.
The plus side is that you do get two free games with your hyper expensive new graphics card—Far Cry 6 and Resident Evil Village—as well as one month's free access to Xbox Game Pass for PC. That's a whole lot more than two games, and is actually a pretty decent bundle all told.
ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT Phantom Gaming D | RDNA 2 | 5,120 cores | 16GB GDDR6 | 2,340 MHz Boost clock | $1,599.99 $1,499.99 at Newegg (save $100)
The fact that we're at a stage where finding a new GPU at MSRP is cause for celebration means that when one turns up with an actual discount it's a red-letter day. The Radeon RX 6900 XT is a very powerful graphics card, and will deliver 4K gaming performance on a wide variety of games. You also get 1 month of Xbox Games Pass and free copies of Far Cry 6 and Resident Evil Village.
Sure, it's a powerful graphics card, but for just another $50 you could have this whole gaming laptop.
Asus ROG Zephyrus GA503 | 15.6-inch | Nvidia RTX 3070 | AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS | 1440p | 165Hz | 16GB RAM | 1TB SSD | $1,849.99 $1,549.99 at Best Buy (save $300)
This is probably the best-value RTX 3070-powered gaming laptop we've found this year. Not only do you get that high-performance GPU, but it packs in AMD's octa-core Ryzen 9 5900HS processor, and a 1440p QHD screen running at 165Hz. That's a notably step-up in image quality from 1080p and will make this 15-inch screen feel super-crisp.
It is, however, important to remember that GPU pricing is screwed all over the place. Our recommendations around how to buy a graphics card have recently been focused mostly on putting your money towards full system purchases of gaming PCs or gaming laptops, and giving up on chasing the GPU restock dragon.
Finding a card at MSRP alone is a nightmarishly difficult task, especially on any of the more affordable versions of the latest AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, which sadly does make this sub-MSRP ASRock RX 6900 XT a deal.
Just a very expensive one.